Artillery fire heard in downtown Donetsk

DONETSK, October 8. /TASS/. Sounds of artillery fire can be heard in the center of Donetsk, the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, a TASS correspondent reported Wednesday.

On Tuesday evening, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council’s information and analysis center announced the so-called “regime of silence” during which combat operations and shellings in the contact zone of Kiev’s troops and southeastern militias should be stopped.

In turn, the Defense Ministry of the DPR said it had not received any notifications from the Kiev authorities on the new cessation of fire. The ministry said “two people died and three were wounded as a result of shellings in Donetsk over the past day”.

According to the United Nations, some 3,500 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s war-torn southeast as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics (DPR and LPR).

The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on cessation of fire during talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk. The ceasefire took effect the same day but reports said it has occasionally been violated.

Ukraine’s parliament on September 16 granted a special self-rule status to certain districts in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions for three years.